Those few governments who prosecute holocaust deniers were and are democratically elected. They use the documented and publicly available laws of the land to control a particular and specific problem that existed in their society and want to prevent it recurring. They use the legal system to test what their accused have done and then punish them according to the documented legal code.

Whereas:

People that kill others unannounced, without warning, without trial, are generally considered by almost all governments and most people globally to be working outside an unwritten code of what we consider reasonable human behaviour.

(Original post by MatureStudent36)
A government has a duty to protect its people from nasty people. Holicaust deniers in many cses are nasty people denying a fact to garner support for their fringe cause.

A government is protecting no one by silencing "nasty" views. First of all, whether or not something is "nasty" is far too personal to defend such actions. Some may argue that infant circumcision is "nasty" and therefore Rabbis who promote it should be jailed. That doesn't seem to be happening, and for good reason; censorship damages public discourse and harms people.

Here's an analogy that might help. In America, state governments may have laws that outline the punishment for murder is the death sentence. So why is it wrong for me to go out and stab someone who I think is a murderer?
In both cases we're persecuting murderers, right?
You can't take the law into your own hands. Mandate vs no mandate. That simple.

Agreed, people should have the right to an opinion om Holocaust. If questioning something is not allowed it is as if someone didnt want anyone to discover the truth and if Holocaust was real, its disrespectful for the victims to make a dogma out of it.

(Original post by BitWindy)
A government is protecting no one by silencing "nasty" views. First of all, whether or not something is "nasty" is far too personal to defend such actions. Some may argue that infant circumcision is "nasty" and therefore Rabbis who promote it should be jailed. That doesn't seem to be happening, and for good reason; censorship damages public discourse and harms people.

Infant circumcision has never resulted in several million people being marched into a gas chamber and murderered.

We're quite lucky in the UK. Out extremes right wing are really a minority. Germany and Austria especially have had bigger problems with right wing extremists.

I'm not aware of an issue within Islam or Christianity where a western democracy knowingly coordinated the mass extermination of several million people in an industrialised method such as gas chambers.

Holocaust denial is illegal in those countries that were directly involved in acts of genocide (France, Germany and Austria in particular.) it's not illegal anywhere else.

Holocaust denial is denying something we know happened happening.

You have ignore my point about respecting evidence WHEREVER it may lead. People have been persecuted for citing bits of evidence regarding the Holocaust because other people don't like where it leads. Evidence is evidence, facts are facts. The individuals facts are more sacred than any conclusions. We don't know for sure anything that happened before we were born because we weren't there. Persecuting people for evidence is barbaric on a par with religious terrorists because it's using state violence to maintain a belief system. As soon as someone suppresses evidence what they are doing in NECESSARILY supporting a belief system.

(Original post by MatureStudent36)
A government has a duty to protect its people from nasty people. Holicaust deniers in many cses are nasty people denying a fact to garner support for their fringe cause.

Nasty is your subjective judgement. The terrorists could equally say that something is nasty and therefore they need to equalise things thought the barrel of a gun.

(Original post by BitWindy)
"I get to decide what is and isn't nasty, your opinion is irrelevant"
-"Mature"Student36, your friendly neighbourhood dictator

You're being ridiculous. Let people decide for themselves what they agree with, don't censor it before it reaches them.

Are you also going to argue that cartoon lampooning Islam should be censored because the crusades happened? You have provided no concrete definition of "nastiness".

You can decide whatever you want, but several european nations who were actively involved in the holocaust have decided that to ensure that its population never again embrace the ideology that allowed several million people to be killed on an industrial scale, to remove the fuel that feeds the rather frightening extreme right wing elements in society.

It's ok for you to argue a point over a pint, but I doubt you have any concept of how frightening right wing neo nazis are on the continent. They make our own loons look like choir boys.

As I say, I'd ban anything and everything that stops a civilised western nation embracing and ideology of hatred and genocide.

(Original post by MatureStudent36)
As I say, I'd ban anything and everything that stops a civilised western nation embracing and ideology of hatred and genocide.

Is that quite what you meant? State-sponsored censorship of anything the state considers a danger to itself? Silencing its members from criticising it? That's not a government I'd want to live under.

Having one law that says "It is illegal to deny we as a nation were responsible for a specific tragedy and it is illegal to promote the name or icons of the organisation that did it" is very different from "It is illegal to say anything critical of whatever we decide or participating in any collective or group or associating with such people as we may later determine be it face-to-face or online".

You need to be very wary of giving up your freedoms of communication and association to protect whoever is in charge.

(Original post by Simes)
Is that quite what you meant? State-sponsored censorship of anything the state considers a danger to itself? Silencing its members from criticising it? That's not a government I'd want to live under.

Having one law that says "It is illegal to deny we as a nation were responsible for a specific tragedy and it is illegal to promote the name or icons of the organisation that did it" is very different from "It is illegal to say anything critical of whatever we decide or participating in any collective or group or associating with such people as we may later determine be it face-to-face or online".

You need to be very wary of giving up your freedoms of communication and association to protect whoever is in charge.

If giving up tha freedom results in an aborant extremist fringe grouping not having access to anything that will allow them to gain more support. Then censor and ban away.

Many in germany do not feel that the gwrman acceptance of its responsibility in WW2 went far enough.

(Original post by MatureStudent36)
If giving up tha freedom results in an aborant extremist fringe grouping not having access to anything that will allow them to gain more support. Then censor and ban away.

Many in germany do not feel that the gwrman acceptance of its responsibility in WW2 went far enough.

Do then you would agree with ISIS that we should all give up our freedoms to make sure that evil and abhorrent regimes which don't respect the Prophet form and continue to exist?

(Original post by Jkruger1)
Your response is flawed. Yesterday the British media ran a story about a suspended Labour Party representative that used Auschwitz in an advert to slam the Tory Party (the usual nonsense policies of lip service). The usual nonsense political reaction occurred to the nonsense act. The British media ran stories which implied that Auschwitz was in Germany when it was actually in Poland. Educated and even educators people talk about death camps in Germany when the so called expert historians say that none were in Germany (the ones in Germany were
tested by Dr. Charles Larson, the U.S. Chief Forensic Pathologist in 1945 and the result was negative) and the historical experts then say that the death camps were in Poland. But now if you keep in mind the series of events in the popular story, write them down and you ask your surviver friends non-leading questions about these camps, I would bet that the answers do not correspond with these. This evidence you refer to, can you actually empirically tally it to the widely believed story, or are these just artefacts which you attribute to the story. For example a sword could be displayed in a museum with a place that says "This sword was used to kill Julius Caesar." That alone does not mean that the sword was used
to kill Julius Caesar. Someone a long time ago may have just said that. In a modern context you if you had DNA evidence on the murder weapon, and records demonstrated that the murder weapon was found near a body, you were able to trace the ownership of the murder weapon etc. this would be corroborating evidence. In the 1970s, 30 historians signed a document that basically says it doesn't matter about the evidence of the Holocaust or whether it was technically possibly, it just happened.

Now you talking about people denying the death of millions. The British police are investigating the disappearance of a young boy in the 1980s. One theory is that a Paedophile network of high ranking people may have taken the boy. The police have said that they will follow the evidence wherever it will lead.

Yet when people have done various hard facts empirical studies in German run camps like Auschwitz like the student jailed for a chemical analysis, people are not allowed to follow the evidence wherever it leads. Instead people like you will jump in and accuse them of denying the death of millions and other people want to harm them and jail them.

Yet if you ask the average Iraqi what transpired in the 2 Gulf Wars, the response aligns with the officially known facts and will be far worse than what the average person believes. It much more empirically aligned than the German death camp story.

But despite this dehumanising and punishing people for views on ww2 Germany is encouraged yet we get angry when Muslims do the same. Both acts of repression should not be tolerated.

As to criticising Jews, for example if someone says that the United States is
run largely by neoconservative Jews, the statement is frowned upon, and in Germany the police may be called, yet the statement is empirically true.

People like to state that one persons belief is delusional while fighting people on empirical indisputable facts, then because they cannot win against hard facts, resorting to name calling, labelling and censorship.

The only differences between the 2 approaches is that one is using state violence to arbitrate and one is arbitrating through the barrel of a gun.

Why do people act like this? Because they are not free despite the alleged framework of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. People are slaves.

Although the Germans exported human beings to Poland to be exterminated we must not forget that many many thousands were murdered in camps in Germany.

(Original post by Jkruger1)
Do then you would agree with ISIS that we should all give up our freedoms to make sure that evil and abhorrent regimes which don't respect the Prophet form and continue to exist?

Not at all. I'm talking from a western culture. Thers a huge different between western culture that is based on Christio Judaic principAls and not Islam.

But in effect, we are denying freedoms to Muslims in that sense in the west as we don't tolerate extremist Muslim behaviour.

(Original post by MatureStudent36)
Because holocaust denial in many countries that were affected by the holicaust is code by the extreme right for 'I agree with what happened.'

I have no problem with revisionist history, but in the case of the holocaust that should be refining what happened. Not denying it happened which is what you're avaderge holcaust denial nut job does.

I finally agree with you!!!
Agree fully. By all means if people want to question some of the details and dates etc thats okay. But to question whether such atrocities took place in the wake of such overwhelming evidence has a nasty political motive behind it.

(Original post by Bornblue)
I finally agree with you!!!
Agree fully. By all means if people want to question some of the details and dates etc thats okay. But to question whether such atrocities took place in the wake of such overwhelming evidence has a nasty political motive behind it.

(Original post by Bornblue)
I finally agree with you!!!
Agree fully. By all means if people want to question some of the details and dates etc thats okay. But to question whether such atrocities took place in the wake of such overwhelming evidence has a nasty political motive behind it.

I am not talking about people who make blanket statements of the top of their head like "The Holocaust never happened" (because I feel like saying it) or the world is only 6 thousand years old or ancient aliens exist.

I am talking about people who have produced or cited hard physical, chemical, analytical or legal analysis or acted in an official instructed legal capacity. If someone has made an objective empirical objective study or observation that seems to lead to the Holocaust being significantly and materially different to the popular story, they have been persecuted. The persecutor can't persecute the evidence or analysis so they shoot the messenger. There is a long list of such people.

Part of the persecutor is to label such people as being ridiculous and careless and just "denying something obvious" for an agenda and you ignore the point that I am talking about people who have cited something objective and who have no agenda like Sylvia Stolz or the student who did the PhD thesis or Fred Leuchter, Paul Rassinier, David Irving. Most people who attempt discredit them simply copy paste someone else's discreditation and have never even looked at their analysis

These quasi-religious nut jobs ("Holocaustianity") ought on try and jail The Times and The Daily Mail for staying that Simon Wiesenthal is a compulsive liar. The compartmentalisation of people when being explained a statement like that is just staggering. For 99% of people, their analysis is constrained by the herd and facts mean nothing if they disagree with the herd.

Who was 7 when WW2 ended and who was proven in court to be racist and who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence", particularly when failing to defend his libel case. A nut case.

(Original post by Jkruger1)
Most people who attempt discredit them simply copy paste someone else's discreditation and have never even looked at their analysis.

Of course, debunk the evidence first and deny the truth. In that case, you prove your argument.

Let's see you post a scholarly peer-reviewed article from a reliable academic institution for each of the above people defending their argument.